Taking a break from their respective bands, songwriters Jon Foreman (Switchfoot's frontman) and Sean Watkins (Nickel Creek's guitarist) explore the boundaries of acoustic folk-pop with this self-titled debut. The fact that Fiction Family was nearly released by Starbucks says much about the music contained herein, with its emphasis on coffeehouse guitar progressions and wistful melodies. Foreman and Watkins recorded the disc themselves, finding brief moments between tours to trade ideas and build the songs layer by layer.

There’s nothing really wrong with earnestness —certainly worse personality traits exist—and yet, few approaches to the world can come across as so utterly annoying. That comes in large part because—not to sound to Wildean about it—people who have painfully little else to offer employ earnestness regularly and wantonly If you can’t be interesting, at least be sincere about it. At least that’s the tack taken by Fiction Family, the unholy amalgam of Switchfoot frontman Jon Foreman and Nickel Creek multi-instrumentalist Sean Watkins, on its self-titled debut.